Lost Along the Way(73)
“That was awesome!” Cara said. She and Meg watched in amazement as Sheila futilely punched buttons on her phone. “I love him. I officially love him.”
“I told you. Nick is the absolute best,” Meg agreed.
“Okay, come on, we need to get out of here before that girl sees us and follows us home like a stray cat.”
“What about my pie plate?” Meg asked as they slowly made their way out from behind the rack of paint cans.
“It will have to wait. We have bigger problems,” Cara said. She grabbed Meg’s sleeve and the two of them inched quietly toward the back door, leaving Sheila standing alone, violently cursing Nick.
twenty-four
Jane figured she’d hang on the deck at the house and have a few cocktails in peace, but something stopped her. If she was going to sit and drink by herself all day, she might as well have stayed in her apartment in Manhattan. In Montauk she was free. Free to go outside without worrying that people would throw rocks at her. Free to be seen in public without needing to hide behind sunglasses and a baseball hat. Most important, she was free to drive. Jane decided that if she had to choose between a glass of wine and the open road, this time she’d choose the road. She remembered passing some farm stands on the side of the highway about thirty minutes west of Montauk, and she thought it’d be a really nice gesture to pick up some things for Meg. She grabbed Cara’s keys off the console and headed out to the driveway, feeling like a teenager who’d just gotten her license. She hadn’t been this excited to run an errand in her entire life.
Jane never shopped at farmers’ markets, though. Supporting local farmers seemed to be the cool thing to do these days and, because Jane had never been much for trends, she never stepped foot inside any of the markets in the city. She had no interest in mingling with the hippies who drove down from upstate on the weekends to force organic produce on people who probably washed down their meals with wine and cigarettes. She didn’t see the need for it. Her delivery menus had served her just fine, and that was how she liked it.
Out in Montauk, it didn’t seem like people frequented farm stands because it was cool or trendy or politically correct. It was just part of life. And, since Jane was now part of life on the East End, she didn’t mind driving the thirty minutes to visit one of the various stands scattered along the side of the highway. It seemed silly to go to the one grocery store in town to buy things when it was less expensive to watch them be pulled from the ground immediately before they were purchased. Plus, it felt nice to be in a car with the windows open, the radio on, and clean air making her hair blow in tangles. It felt nice to be free, unencumbered, and better yet, not tailed by anyone with a camera, a notepad, and a misplaced vendetta against her.
Jane finally felt at ease. She remembered driving out to Long Beach with her boyfriend from high school one summer. They’d talked about how things would be when they went off to college, how they couldn’t wait to get out of their small town, how they were going to do great things with their lives. She’d sat in the passenger seat with her sunglasses on, her charm bracelet clanging against the outside of the car, and her head bobbing slightly, keeping time with the music. She couldn’t remember where Cara or Meg had been that afternoon. Maybe they were busy, or maybe Jane had decided that she wanted to spend the afternoon without them. Maybe those were the first small steps she took to separate herself from the group. She thought she knew everything back then, that she was making all the right decisions, that there would be a million other boys after she broke up with the one driving her down the Meadowbrook Parkway. She glanced at Cara’s passenger seat, half expecting to see the dark-haired boy in the green baseball hat sitting next to her. Instead, there were two brown paper bags overflowing with lettuces, potatoes, squash, and apples that she’d purchased with some of the little money she had left.
When she returned to the house, Cara was lying down in her room and Meg was baking her seventh batch of muffins in three days. Jane knew Meg was using the muffins as some kind of weird Steve substitute, but she really needed to get it under control, as three grown women did not need to eat a dozen muffins a day. That said, if she did take on the Meg diet of blueberry, banana nut, and cranberry oatmeal muffins, she’d probably put on enough weight that no one at home would recognize her, and she could hide in plain sight. It wasn’t the worst idea. Carbo-loading did offer its own special brand of comfort.
“Smells good in here!” Jane sang as she dropped the bags on the floor by the refrigerator and began to unload them. “I went to the farm stand and picked up a few things. I’m sorry I couldn’t buy more, but it’s the best thank-you gift I could get you under the circumstances.”
“That’s so nice of you!” Meg said, fishing through one of Jane’s bags and placing the apples in a large ceramic bowl on the counter. “We were a little nervous when we got home and saw the car was gone. We weren’t sure you even remembered how to drive!”
“It was actually really nice. I didn’t realize how much I missed driving until I did it. I hope Cara doesn’t mind. I thought getting out of the house was a better alternative than drinking by myself.”
“Definitely. And it was really nice of you to bring back groceries. Do you want me to teach you to cook something? Maybe you’d find it de-stresses you the way it does me!”